A burnt dog dreads the fire.
WILLA CATHER, "The Sculptor's Funeral," The Troll Garden
It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.
WILLA CATHER, "On the Divide," The Troll Garden
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.
WILLA CATHER, "On the Divide," The Troll Garden
Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.
WILLA CATHER, "The Burglar's Christmas," Home Monthly, Dec. 1896
It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.
WILLA CATHER, "The Burglar's Christmas," Home Monthly, Dec. 1896
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.
WILLA CATHER, My Antonia
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
WILLA CATHER, O Pioneers
Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.
WILLA CATHER, The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews
For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.
WILLA CATHER, "On the Divide," The Troll Garden
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